People don't understand that cigarettes are self-limiting because they literally hurt your throat and lungs. Most people simply can't chain smoke and they need about an hour break in between smokes.

With vaping that limit is completely gone. A vaping addiction can keep escalating until you want a puff every 30 seconds, especially once you start breaking down mental barriers like "no vaping indoors" or "no vaping while on the computer", etc.

So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.

Are you speaking at all from experience?

>Most people [...] need about an hour break in between smokes.

I've never seen anything like that. When there's a group of social smokers standing around, it's very common for something like "Oh, I just finished mine and you're only half-way through yours, I'll light up another one to keep you company" to happen. I've seen plenty of people who aren't chain smokers (yet), but can easily go through 2-4 cigarettes in a row if they're suddenly in a stressful situation and smoking "to relax".

>So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.

But that's not a metric that's in any way helpful for a health decision. Nicotine in and of itself is not particularly physically harmful - it's toxic at high doses and elevates heart rate for a bit, but that's about it. The delivery method is what causes most of the harm, and smoking is 100% known to cause a lot of harm in a lot of different ways. And "With vaping that limit is completely gone" is also not accurate. Unlike the Navier-Stokes equations, dopamine receptors don't experience infinite blowup in finite time. So choosing a delivery method based on the amount of nicotine taken daily is not going to change much in terms of addiction (if you're already heavily addicted, you'll remain heavily addicted), but can have a huge impact on physical health.

This is not true.. you can chain smoke for hours if you get used to smoking. Drunk people do it all the time. When your nicotine addiction ramps up enough you'll get cravings to do that always.

Maybe that's the case for you, but that would make you the exception. In the 80's when and where I grew up, it was very common for adults to estimate cigarette consumption in terms of, "packs per day."

There is probably some truth to what you're saying, but also keep in mind that tobacco contains more active compounds than nicotine alone, including MAO inhibitors in the form of harmala alkaloids. These can synergise with nicotine and make it more addictive.

Also, I'm dubious about your claim that most people need breaks, or at least any more than vapers do. I was a smoker for over a decade. I don't remember ever feeling like "that's enough, my throat hurts". It's just that smoking was triggered by the onset of withdrawal, which begins after about an hour, and becomes urgent after maybe 2-3 hours. So I'd typically smoke at an interval of 1-3 hours depending on how convenient it was to do so. And cigarettes are expensive, so that factors into it too.

Sometimes though, especially when drinking, I could chain smoke for a couple hours straight while hanging out in a park with friends, especially in the summer.

After I switched to vaping though, I have at times ended up puffing so enthusiastically that I've made myself nauseous from the nicotine. So there's certainly a limit there too.

Edit: another interesting thing I've noticed. Nicotine withdrawal seems much less severe after I switched to vaping. It takes several hours longer to become noticeable, and also feels less intense. When smoking, it took me 1 hour to start craving a cigarette, by 3 hours I'm becoming irritable with strong craving, and by 5 hours I'm extremely irritable, light-headed, and the only thing on my mind is smoking, completely incapable of focusing on anything except how to get some cigarettes and how to get to somewhere I can smoke em.

For vaping, it takes me maybe 7-8 hours to get to the 3 hour mark for smoking. I certainly get cravings long before that, maybe starting at 2-3 hours, but I'm able to push it out of my mind much more easily, for much longer. I don't know why this is. My theory is something to do with the lack of MAO inhibitors. It's also possible that it's a pharmacokinetic phenomenon, but that seems counterintuitive. If I'm ingesting higher doses of nicotine compared to smoking, blood levels will take longer to go to zero. But then I should also have higher tolerance, and therefore a higher threshold for the onset of withdrawal, since tolerance and chemical dependence are more or less the same thing.

Yup. This was my main takeaway from vaping in the 2010s, after I 'quit' smoking.

However, the vast majority of my nicotine usage after quitting was chewing nicotine gum -- for 11 years! It also has the qualities you mention. You can be chewing all the time, anywhere, everywhere, and without any of the vaping restrictions places have.

Nicotine gum isn't for everyone, but if you're one of the people for whom it really takes as an addiction of its own, it's that much more difficult to quit because it's discreet, there's essentially no stigma, and you can do chew absolutely anywhere, doing practically anything.

There is no inherent self limitation from cigarettes beyond the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. I’m not sure who you knew that smoked but I can say for certain that long-time heavy users don’t need an hour break. Quite the opposite. Abusers will hack up a lung after minutes without a cigarette puff and will wake up in the middle of the night to smoke, repeatedly.

This thread (outside your statements) is such a bizarre conversation to me that somehow people have deluded themselves into the argument a cigarette is a better option than putting in work to quit. Heroin could probably help someone stop smoking pot…that doesn’t mean it is a better choice just because “it’s harder to afford when you’re a junkie and therefore takes longer to get a hit than finding a J”.

I get the capability to abuse is easier than a cigarette, no disagreement. It’s probably similar to when smoking was allowed everywhere including on planes and in restaurants. I don’t see how the solution to ease of use, ease of access, and manufacturers adding far too much nicotine is “start smoking a different product with proven worse health consequences, including cancer, rather than vaping too much and possibly having some negative health effects”. These days nearly all major vape companies are owned by tobacco companies. They have a lot of experience in pushing the addictiveness boundaries for significant profit from the past 100+ years, and they are doing it again with vapes.

I say all this as someone who smoked for 15+ years, up to a pack and a half to two packs a day, vaped increasingly more nicotine over 5 years, and quit vaping over the course of a year by mixing 0mg nicotine liquid -- almost every vape liquid manufacturer offers it -- in fractionally increasing ratios each week until I was only vaping zero nicotine. I continued vaping 0mg for years after because I actually enjoy the act of smoking, but I finally just decided not to anymore.

Choosing not to quit and choosing not take any responsibility or steps toward battling your addictions are vastly different from not being capable. Everyone has the capacity to battle their addictions when they choose to, and small counter-examples or lack of success do not negate that premise.

Vaping definitely increased my nicotine addiction, mostly because I could do it indoors all day while working, in the car, at night, etc.

The only limiting factor was the nausea of nicotine overdose, which I remember occasionally from chain smoking indoors.

This simply isn't true at all. A pack+ a day habit isn't uncommon. I'll smoke an entire pack in 4 hours if I'm drinking outside by a campfire.

> Most people simply can't chain smoke and they need about an hour break in between smokes.

Major skill issue.

I helped a friend quit vaping with the nicotine patches for smoking. I had to do some math because a vape hit is not 1:1 with a cigarette hit, and found that the highest dose of a patch was too low for her to start, and had to start with a few max dose patches.

Those patches aren't cheap, albeit neither is the addiction either, but just like the jump from cigarettes to nicotine gum is a good jump, so is vape to cigarettes sometimes. It was a long and painful journey for my friend even with my help, so I don't envy anyone with it worse than her (or even less of the addiction)

I totally disagree with you here. Cigarettes are by far 100% worse on every level than vaping. Now, I tell people to not do either one, but since you tried to promote vapes over cigarettes here - you did not mention the damage to DNA and the rise in cancer by cigarette smokes. They literally lose many years of their life when smoking. Also, "need an hour break in between smokes", clearly shows that you never saw a chain smoker on a party. They don't need any downtime. They just continue to smoke. Even when coughing.

But also your comment of "pure addiction" is simply wrong, because nicotine is more addictive than what you have in a vape (at the least with regards to level of concentration). I don't know why you think cigarettes would be better anywhere than vaping. It's just wrong. And both should be avoided anyway; people should not fall for the lie that vaping is better, but even less so that cigarettes is better. Why promote damaging substances anyway? Damage to lung cells exist via vaping too. People seem to forget that. They did not even know that asbesto fibers are damaging for a long time.

> cigarettes are self-limiting they literally hurt your throat and lungs

Eh ...

I didn't know many smokers who smoke < 1 pack per day. For those < 1 pack per day, it's mostly b/c they just haven't gotten there yet, but that's where they're headed.

Smokers aren't really going to change their smoking rituals either, just b/c their throat is a little sore or they're short of breath. They just switch to lights and/or menthol, or otherwise find a brand that doesn't punch them in the throat like Marlboro Reds do.

Going longer than usual without a smoke, generally means chain smoking 2 or more to catch up

Once addicted, it really takes a lot of hurt to self-limit. That means being literally sick, realistically.

Personally, I found vaping far easier to quit than cigarettes.